Uchaguzi

Uchaguzi has prepared a Web-based, crowd-sourced map of Kenya that [...] will track thousands of SMS messages, tweets, phone calls and emails from members of the public, civil society activists, election monitors and local officials, to build a picture of what is happening across the country.

Michela WrongColumnist and author of “It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower”

Uchaguzi was an initiative to monitor the 2013 Kenyan General Election, in an effort to make the voting process more transparent, peaceful, and fair than in the previous election in 2007. The project gave citizens the ability to report on any suspicious or violent activity with the confidence that their voice would be heard and their report taken seriously.

Ushahidi acted as the technology partner, and was critical in the success of the initiative. We built an enhanced, upgraded version of our crowdsourcing platform (the Ushahidi Platform), allowing up to 8 digital teams to map and respond to reports simultaneously. We also helped train local volunteers to process and verify the incoming reports, provided consulting to the project’s partners on how to run a national outreach program, and ran the central situation room throughout the election.

Ultimately the 2013 Kenyan General Election proved to be largely peaceful. Of the 8000 respondents who reported an incident using Uchaguzi, nearly three quarters said that the incident reported was resolved. The thousands of reports captured by the platform made a significant contribution to a process deemed more transparent and equitable than ever before.